The rest of us pay the price

Thomas Buddenbrook in Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks, meditating on the irritations of growing old: "We’re only as young or old as we feel. And when something good we’ve longed for finally does come along, it lumbers in a little too late somehow, loaded down with petty, annoying, upsetting details, covered with all the grime of reality that we never really imagined, and that is so irritating – irritating."

Richard Grannison in Raymond Postgate's Somebody at the Door soliloquises about afternoons: “Afternoons are the time for seduction. Anatole France proved it long ago … “Consider the whole question in the light of reason … The conventional night out. What does it mean? Why, creeping home about five in the morning, very tired and uncomfortable, with none of the buses or trains running, and probably no taxi available.

Characters from the wonderful Barbara Pym's An Unsuitable Attachment, discussing academics and their writing production: “ … my wife says that we anthropologists are like a housewife faced with the remains of yesterday’s stew and wondering whether it can possibly be eked out to make another meal.” “You can do that all right with a stew,” said Penelope. “Add a few more vegetables, some carrots or a tin of peas, and a bouillon cube – or even just water – and serve rather a lot of potatoes with it.”

Keep Trump out of Parliament

Why I left to help launch a vibrant, new, independent media outlet

The joy of research, as described in Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen's The Rabbit Back Literature Society: What joy is there in research, anyway? someone had once asked in one of her methodology courses. The teaching assistant’s answer had made an impression on Ella at the time: Research brings order to the world. It makes things clearer, helps us to understand things.

YouTube video by Steve Rosenberg